Thursday, May 14, 2015

Nobody wants to hear about my health problems.
So I'm not going to bore you. But let's just say I'm not unique for a
woman of my certain age. Particularly one who had wine as a major food group.

I’ve been writing about food for years and I would estimate that at
least 90 percent of those stories featured copious amounts of fried food and
even larger amounts of sugar. These foods went particularly well with the daily
hangover I’d come to accept as normal. And judging from reader feedback, I was
not alone. I felt like death a lot of the time, so I did what we’ve learned to
do. I Googled “Feel Like Death.”

What I learned is I was doing everything wrong. Eating wrong, drinking
too much. Exercise? Ha. So I’ve started to change. I’d quit drinking a hundred
times. This time, after being derailed by a loved one’s death, I quit again.
But this time, I looked for support. Not from other people. Not from 12-Step
groups, which work for some addicts, but not most of them. I went the internal,
soul-strengthening route of treating myself like a person who deserved to live
a good life because — insert long, boring backstory here — I had convinced
myself otherwise.

The first step in this process is Getting Over It. Getting over my
aversion to vegetables. Getting over my belief that I am special, deserving of
indulgences. Getting over a compulsion to fill my empty spaces with food now
that the wine is gone.